2017 Yangarra Estate Shiraz

South Australia may have built a formidable reputation for rich, generous Shiraz but it’s Grenache that seems a better fit to climate for my less than populist geek view. So, a few bottles in a damaged label six pack at the wholesaler’s annual clearance, or frenzy as it’s known hereabouts, promised a good chance to see what a favourite producer are doing. Very well in short. A touch of dusty bottle development already, tar and deep brown spices. Tangy plums suit the spice well. Sucking in oxygen over two days and it freshened up to include rich summer and autumn berries touched by chocolate. Terrific shape through the mouth with settled acidity well moulded to a sweep of stem and skin tannin. Any oak influence a mere afterthought. Sweet earth to season and a purple haze lingers. Compact and very well made. So different to those booze soaked, oaky, acid adjusted monsters of yore. Very happy to have another waiting a few years. Beautiful grape growing.

14% alcohol. Screw cap. $35 RRP and still great value at that.

94 points.

2019 Penfolds Koonunga Hill Autumn Riesling

A retro label indulging TWE’s marketing department’s love of even more new bottles to range. This was happily part of mystery six pack from a recent clearance. Opened as an apero at a family gathering thinking it might please those lucky not to be so obsessed by wine, it was avoided in favour of more familiar spritzes and gins. Getting most of the bottle to myself over a couple of days, it turned out to be delicious. Beautifully made without the clatter of artifice Penfolds save for their red wines, my guess would be a pure expression of Eden Valley Riesling, not that a Penfolds label would let you know. Googling reveals past Autumns were indeed such with a small percentage of gross Gewurztraminer which would have been enough to suggest a pass. Prejudice aside, what was in the glass was attractive and intriguing to sniff. Sweet lime zest and exotic citrus like bergamot and yuzu perhaps. Wet chalky soil and a real depth of quality grapes. An edge of mystery perfume, fleeting and judicially applied, Gewurz maybe? The acidity is settled and counterpointed by a lick of residual sugar, just enough to add a delicious glide. The big machine that’s TWE is easy to criticise but the way incoming grapes are sorted, graded and so carefully turned into a drink is damn impressive. Preconceptions are just daft, sometimes.

12% alcohol. Screw cap. RRP low $20s normally?

92 even 93 points.

2019 Gravity Wine Co Ghost Syrah

Shamelessly biased review, this, as over the last decade I’ve come to admire the quiet, intelligent and determined way the man behind the Gravity Wine Co goes about things. Especially the sanguine shrug of the shoulders when frost decimated the chances of making wine in 2020 amongst other difficulties. One joy not lost though was the chance to sit with a glass of something very tasty. My inadequate scribble suggests an extraordinary spice bazaar, perfect mint and raspberry, haze of bay leaf, rosemary and almost lavender. Bit of Heathcote forest too. The inherent deep fruit softness and sweetness of tannin and acidity never to be mistaken for lack of backbone. An unassuming suggestion that this might be the best south bit of Heathcote Syrah he’s made, not going to argue otherwise. Spookily good.

13% alcohol. Screwcap. Perhaps around $30?

95 points lacking a bit of objectivity.

2014 Moreau Naudet Chablis Vaillons 1er cru

Not sure if complexity in wine flavours is necessarily a good thing but when all the smells and tastes are sumptuous, well then I’m happy to cope with the competition for my attention. Opening with almost caramel toffee, bit of aldehyde, damn cork perhaps? Quickly turns to creme brûlée, then wild waxy honey, quince and ripe exotic citrus. Twists and turns with air, a little hazelnut through the middle, bruised apples and pears, finally a yoghurt tang and wet chalky soil. Power packed but so self contained by pith and mouthwatering acidity. Great white Burgundy from the north end of things. Essence of Chablis, the world’s most delicious Chardonnay surely?

12.5% alcohol. Cork, they flirted with Diam in the past too, doh. About $80 I think.

95 points.

1999 Domaine Henri Gouges Nuits Saint Georges Clos des Porrets – St. Georges 1er cru

A special time of year, well, it is when you open a Burgundy from last century. One of the original growers who took to bottling their own in the 1920s and are still making austere reductive wine from low yields with little new oak flavour. Unfortunate bad press years ago from Americans favouring sweet new oak and extract has served to keep Gouges’ prices relatively stable, thank Bacchus. This bottle opened with reservations about being shaken from its sleep and little to say at first. Despite its age, it gained momentum on day two. Deep into the mouthful, mushy ripe wild strawberry, dark sour cherries in game meat sauce, blood and almond paste; all brightly lit by a startlingly wild geology. The French say sauvage and they’re right. Amazing rocks, stones and earth. A tiny bit of bilge water old oak doesn’t detract from driving, life affirming acidity and melting finest sandpaper tannin. Fairly convincing argument that there’s something to this terroir thing.

13% alcohol. Cork. About €40 from Lavinia some years ago.

94 points eventually and maybe just how NSG is supposed to be.

2016 Xavi Pallejà Buxus de les Aubagues Priorat

Catalan labelling is far more complicated than my limited language ability can deal with. I think Xavi is the producer, Buxus seems to be a variety of boxwood and Aubagues has something to do with shade and the cooler zone of Priorat or Partida les Aubagues? The label also notes the village of Bellmunt del Priorat and that this is a village wine, vi de villa, in what seems to be the emerging Priorat classification system. There’s a good article on spanishwinelover.com which goes into fascinating detail. Annoyingly, my ageing iPad won’t let me copy and paste the link. Looking at the label, I was hoping Buxus might be a pretty good name for an elephant.

Notwithstanding the esoteric label, if ever a bottle shows just how profoundly good a Samsó, or Carignan to us non Catalans, with 25% Grenache can be, then this is the business. It even looks so good as it pours, a bright carmine with royal purple flashes. In smell and flavour, it’s soft, clean, rich and precise. All the fresh, squishy berries of summer plus a seasoning of cocoa, roast sweet goat and that Priorat sooty old fireplace thing. The next day and a couple thereafter, I found myself scribbling words like, great wine, seldom seen. So pure, deep and a perfume to haunt those places where we remember our favourite pleasures. Staring into infinity length, floating on buoyant acidity and such sweet skin tannin. Essence of grape and place. Alright, it’s a nice drink.

14.5% alcohol. Cork. Part of a mystery six pack from The Spanish Acquisition’s pandemic survival sale. Somewhat dismayed to see a RRP of over a hundred in Australian dolores. Worth a trip to Tarragona and into the hills to save a fortune.

96 points plus another point for an elephant.

2013 Tyrrell’s HVD Vineyard Semillon and 2009 Tyrrell’s VAT 1 Semillon

Our turn to host neighbours for drinks. They’re of a vintage to have known Murray Tyrrell and the Hunter Valley in the 1970s, thus it seemed a safe bet to haul out a maturing HVD from the stash and invite their reminisces. Indulging my hopeless wine obsession, they turned up with a cool bottle of Tyrrell’s finest from a very, very good year. Wise with age and very kind. Smoked salmon blini and off we go.

Tyrrell’s Semillon siblings, there’s a strong family resemblance but naturally some personality differences. Both have a white peach richness over lemon curd and a beeswax glide. Similarly there’s a dry, mouthwatering line of svelte acidity. The HVD has a swell of more hedonistic fruit and generosity. The VAT 1 is perhaps more composed and even with a perfumed linger, less plump pleasure and more intellect, metaphorically so or I’d struggle. Nonetheless the DNA is one of just sweet ripeness contained by a lightness of being at low alcohol rarely glimpsed in warm hearted Australian white wine. Idiosyncratic and as Australian as Xmess in the sun.

HVD 11.5% VAT 1 11% alcohols. Screw cap, perfect for such delicate power. 94 points for both, maybe 95 as they got on so well, no sibling squabbling.

2019 Saltram Winemaker’s Selection Barossa Valley Fiano

Another example of trying to find varieties more suited to a warm and getting warmer climate, this time a favourite Italian suited to food from the ocean. It starts with typically Italian white wine neutrality. No fruit depth charge here. There’s smells of warm beds of chamomile in the sun, warm rocks, sweet hay and nuts, all quite savoury. A pleasing roundness in the mouth kept cool and in line by large textured acidity. Good tension, wide and generous but well contained. Lees lend creamy glycerol and a dab of bitter sulphide adds a tang. Well put together by the big player in Australian wine, again. Lumbering corporation with deft fingers. Impressive.

13.5% alcohol. Screw cap. Part of six bottle mystery pack for $90 from TWE largesse or just largeness.

90 points

2018 Crissante Alessandria Barbera d’Alba

A new producer for me, based in La Morra, home of Altare the modernist and this looks appropriately clean and fresh, albeit without being clobbered by oak flavour. Bearing in mind the Italian formality of putting the family name before the given name, this could the estate of Alessandria Crissante or not? Lovely to say with a musical Italian voice nonetheless despite the possibility of being unforgivably rude and bad at accents. The contents of the bottle are much easier to understand. Bright with dark sour cherry, digestive biscuits, nuts and that Piemontese austere stony earth. Sort of washy in a good way as the flavours float on the journey down the red lane. Ripe but crisply mouthwatering, yum. Wonder what that is in Italian? They must use the words a lot being so good at putting food on the table.

14.5%. Diam, bravo. $41 at auction.

93 points, better the second day, good sign.

2018 Giant Steps LDR Pinot Noir and Syrah

Count my blessings, a place to live where the Covid numbers aren’t troubling the scorer and a bottle to remember very early days in Australian wine when they cared not for variety but made light dry reds by blending. Sadly I’ve never been privy to one of the great Maurice O’Shea blends. Despite an unreasonable prejudice for Pinot the pure, this works a treat. Perfume and cherry Pinot at hello, spice and raspberry arrive late and keep going on a bit. It was at first crack smoky and too reduced for me and needed a day’s air. Second day, there’s still some biscuity reduction, strawberry and roses at the front whilst that Shiraz has a party at the back with berries and toffee. Fine, open meld of acidity and a lick of stem tannin. Graceful in the making. So much for preconceptions, the some of the parts here is more.

13% alcohol. Screw cap. Another bargain from the wholesale clearance.

92 plus a bit for enjoyment.